Goodbye, Ubuntu Edge

Well, it’s official. UK based Canonical’s Ubuntu Edge smartphone/PC’s time on crowdfunding site IndieGoGo has come to an end and as predicted a few weeks ago, it’s ambitious goal of raising $32 million was, unfortunately not met, falling short of about $19 million. That’s a lot of money.

After the 30 day time limit, while the project managed to gain the support of 27, 000 backers and break a record of raising the most amount of funding on the site, the campaign has culminated in a total of $12, 809, 906. The page thanks backers for “being part of the biggest crowdfunding campaign ever” and to “look out for Ubuntu on smartphones in 2014”.

Interestingly enough, according to The Next Web, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth told the Guardian on Monday that there had been “a number of interesting approaches from industry players which get us closer.” Well, with Bloomberg having been the only corporation to support the project, it seems the other potential backers didn’t follow through, perhaps seeing the end result.

So what’s next?

According to Canonical, the company recently admitted that without the full $32 million, it’s highly unlikely the device would be developed at all, but will still continue to work towards bringing Ubuntu to smartphones and tablets.

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Ooboontoo

I dont get this. Its a good idea on one of the most popular OSS platforms out there. $19M is chump change. Why does it HAVE to be all crowdsourced funding? Plenty of banks and venture capitalists could have a go, given the boom in the smartphone market. And THIS, is a Hyper-phone